Oscar nominee James Franco has agreed to a settlement in his sexual misconduct law suit. Franco and his co-defendants will pay $2.2 million to the plaintiffs. JBN first reported on the preliminary settlement agreement back in February.
The two side in the law suit released a joint statement about the agreed upon settlement. “While Defendants continue to deny the allegations in the Complaint, they acknowledge that Plaintiffs have raised important issues; and all parties strongly believe that now is a critical time to focus on addressing the mistreatment of women in Hollywood,” read the statement. “All agree on the need to make sure that no one in the entertainment industry — regardless of sex, race, religion, disability, ethnicity, background, gender or sexual orientation — faces discrimination, harassment or prejudice of any kind.”
James Franco had already lost long time BFF and movie co-star Seth Rogen due to Franco’s history of sexual misconduct. In May Rogen revealed that he had decided not to work together with Franco on any future film projects. Rogen revealed his decision to make the professional break from longtime friend Franco in an interview with England’s The Sunday Times. He made the revelation when discussing his defense of Franco in a print interview which Rogen gave in 2018.
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The lawsuit was filed in 2019 by former students of James Franco’s, Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, over accusations that Franco had engaged in misconduct with students at his acting school called Studio 4. The school has since closed.
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I’ve been screamed at and/or humiliated in rehearsal and on set by men so many times I’ve lost count. It’s often written off as “part of the creative process”. This talk sheds light on how pervasive that problem is. @oliviawilde’s “no assholes policy” should be standard. https://t.co/fHKG5oG280
— Sarah Tither-Kaplan (@sarahtk) February 7, 2021
The women claimed that under the guise of teaching them how to be actors they were required to take part in explicit sex scenes on camera. They claimed that the scenes were unnecessary and felt to them more like orgies than an acting class.
The actresses alleged in the lawsuit that James Franco, “sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education.”
The suit further stated that James Franco, “opted to sexualize their power and fame by dangling the opportunity to aspiring actors of employment in film and television in exchange for explicit nudity, sex and as Franco put it, the ‘pushing of boundaries.’”